Small Space
by Kaneta
Summary: The Avatar's spirit has traveled through time for millenia, always going forward--but not alone. Originally for the "Avatar Ladies" prompt over at Avatarcontest on LiveJournal


We are the ones who love the pieces of them that are capable of human love.

(The first time I saw him, I was knee-deep in the water, washing laundry at the riverbank. A shadow came over the hill, and I looked back, expecting mother. It was not mother, though his smile was as bright as hers.)

(I held his hand when his wife fell to the plague, and wept with him, for her, who I'd loved like a sibling. And it was ten years before I told him how I felt for him.)

(Her eyes were the color of honey, and when she was angry it was like the entire world was fire, I could feel the hiss and snap of it along my skin--but she was never anything but gentle in action, and she did not ever need to raise her voice.)

(It was his laughing wickedness, I think, that finally caught me; the way his lips would curl as if he knew something funny, and would tell me if only I'd pause long enough to listen...)

(We were betrothed when we were thirteen, at our parents' arrangement, and would have been wed at his seventeenth birthday; but his sixteenth birthday changed everything. I followed him anyway.)

The Avatar is the bridge between spirit and mortal, it's true--but if they are that, then we are the ones that bridge the space between them and humanity. We keep them close to us, that they might keep close to the world, and when you look at it that way, it's a mighty task.

(I taught him to dance.)

(She had nightmares. Woke screaming, sometimes. The days after nights like that would always be full of a careful silence.)

(He missed his brothers and sisters terribly, when he had to be away, which was often. His eyes, when I told him that it was going to be twins, were like the Sun and the Moon.)

(He snored. Oh, how he snored. I'd elbow him in the ribs, and he'd turn over in his sleep and throw an arm and leg over me, cuddling me like a pillow.)

And sometimes, we have to sacrifice; as a woman who loves the Lady Avatar, or a peasant lifted past her station, as a noblewoman leaving her parents' will for something that stands outside it. As a vulnerable person, who must stand beside the one who stands apart.

(When my mother turned her back, when the doors of my family's house closed away the light, shut me out in the dark and the snow, his shoulders were straight. His voice was earnest, warm. "I will help you to be happy." he promised. "You will miss them, and I'll do what I can to help them see that they will miss you, too. But on our own, you and me, we will be happy.")

(Sometimes he would watch my limping, and catch me up in his arms, kiss my old shattered ankle. "If I were a Waterbender, and not an Earthbender by nature, I could mend this." he'd say, and I would laugh, and feel entirely safe.)

("You will never. Touch her. Again." How could a voice that was so low carry such a threat? How could a face so mild still be so terrifying? My throat closed, and I just wanted to kiss her forehead, forget duty and family and people and take her somewhere where she would never feel such fury again. Father had gone very red, but he backed away, and she helped me to my feet, careful of my ribs and shoulder...)

("You don't...you don't need to worry anymore, you know." he says, rolling my hand between both of his. Feeling a little bit guilty, I put down the second piece of fruit.)

And sometimes, we die; faceless, or burned, or abed with birthing. We die in battle, we die at their sides, of old age, or sometimes we outlive them--it's a sharp-edged joy, to have our lives beside them and then to have to walk alone again, but to know that somewhere, they yet live. That there may yet be some shade of them that could yet recognize some shard of us, if only we knew where they were.

("Everything of me that can will follow you, my love." His voice is only a whisper, I can barely hear him anymore, and my vision pulses and flares. "Don't be afraid.")

(She's laughing, her very last breath is laughter, and for that alone I could weep with gratitude.)

(He's across the battlefield when the end finds me, and somehow in that last instant his eyes meet mine, filled with horror and grief and fury all at once. I want to tell him thank you--that I regret nothing, nothing at all, not even the long knife that's worked its way up under my breastbone. He's screaming as I fall.)

(I am so very old, when I see the new Avatar. Her eyes are nothing like his, and where he was tall and slim, she is short and compact, and Agni, she is so _young._ I'm far down the table from her, and she's obviously still a bit startled by all this; but once, she glances down at me and it's like feeling his arm around my shoulder again, though I have no attraction for this girl who is younger than my granddaughters. She looks nothing like him. She does not look back at me again. But in that instant, some piece of him looked out at me.)

And sometimes--sometimes, we fail. Sometimes we are too weak, unable to love them as completely as they love the world. We are jealous, we are angry, we are insecure--and we lose them, because to ask the Avatar to choose between one person and all people is asking the Avatar to see us as he does them; to be loved, and protected, and stood beside, but never trusted as absolutely as he must trust himself.

(Nothing to be done for the cord 'caught round the babe's throat, and sensed too late. Not his fault. Not my fault. Nothing to be done. So why am I so angry, still? Why can't I forgive him?)

(He turned away--all I wanted was for him to really _see_ me, and he turned away.)

(I didn't mean to slip--I just wanted to feel like someone cared for me more than anything else in the world, and he wouldn't, so I found someone who would...)

(I can not remember the last time I was able to look him in the eye.)

(I watched him after the storms, the resolution on his face. He worked until he collapsed, every night for a month, digging out and shoring up; and the people watched him too, working next to him, and I should have felt felt proud. But all I felt was a weary irritation.)

(I'm not asking that much. I'm really not asking that much.)

But despite and still, even with our fallibility and their mortal weakness--we are so blessed, to be able to be close to them. After all, their spirit cannot escape the cycle of death and rebirth, and so learns so very well how to care for us. We are lucky to be with one who ultimately will be understanding of any mistake, who will forgive, and love--even if we may never have all of them, what we do have, we have so completely.

(Thirty years married, and he still brings me irises on my birthday.)

(The first time we made love, it was on a warm green mountaintop that could never be reached afoot. I twined her hair with starry vines, and she laughed like a child.)

("In a hundred years, when the person I am meets our great-great-great grandchildren, I will know them." he whispers, rocking our daughter to sleep. "I could never not know them.")

We are not like the Avatar. We may escape this world, ascend to some other level, fly the path of death. When we die, whatever happens to us will not be what happens to them. This is proof of their ultimate love of humanity, to deny themselves _satori_ when surely if they reached out it would fall into their open palm like an overripe breadfruit. Ultimately, everyone must go their own way, even if love itself is eternal. Ultimately, our paths only run side by side, not as one road for the both of us. We will only have this life with them, we're a breeze through their fingertips, a leisurely afternoon in a very long existance.  
But oh, what room we still have, in that small space, for joy.


End file.
